BookLife Review by Carol O’Day: Andromeda (Therese Bohman, author)
Stockholm, Sweden, publishing house, mentor-mentee, boundaries, May-December, platonic friendship, love of literature
In Andromeda, Swedish author, Therese Bohman, delivers a quiet and sophisticated work of literary fiction(translated by Marlaine Delargy). The novel is set in Stockholm, in the city’s prestigious publishing house, Rydens. A young woman named Sofie works at Rydens under a publishing internship. She begins her internship quietly, holding her thoughts and comments to herself until she has a chance encounter with Gunnar, the firm’s editor-in-chief and head of Rydens’ imprint, Andromeda. Through the imprint, Gunnar seeks to feature talented contemporary voices in literary fiction. He tells Sofie that the imprint draws its name from a line from Sappho’s poetry, “Andromeda has something better to offer.” Sofie’s authentic critical comment about a book Rydens is launching outside of the imprint catches Gunnar’s attention, and launches their unusual friendship and working partnership.
Andromeda is not a May-December romance novel. It is, however, a study of a complex relationship of a young female acolyte and a senior male mentor. It is the story of the rare and special intimacy that arises when two colleagues connect intellectually over a shared passion. But it also has fuzzy edges and issues about boundaries. Bohman renders the relationship as deep and professionally intimate, without being sexual or overtly romantic. She deftly threads the needle of a relationship that sits on the edge of romance without making it something tawdry. The novel is told in two parts. Part one is told from Sofie’s first-person point of view. In part two Gunnar shares his personal history as though he were narrating it to Sofie, referring to her in the second person “you.” The reader does not reach Gunnar’s telling until after Sofie’s telling concludes, after Gunnar has retired from the firm, suffered health problems and died, leaving Sofie unguarded and unmoored in a changing work environment. Reading Gunnar’s telling after Sofie’s concludes her telling before is both jarring and illuminating.
What Sofie and Gunnar share is a deep appreciation for literature’s power to express fresh insights, and its ability to capture and express otherwise lost details and memories of the innumerable precious moments in life.
Gunnar explains his love of exceptional writing,
“...the little details that combine to make up almost everything that is precious in life. A scent, an atmosphere, a particular kind of light in the sky. All those fleeting elements that can’t be re-created. Books hold so many memories, details that live on because someone has tried to put them into words, written them down and woven them into a narrative. Just imagine how many perceptions of the world are passed on from one person to another.”
Sofie muses,
“I think I felt closest to him when he talked about literature, because everything he said I had also experienced but had been unable to express. How life-changing a reading experience can be, how it can fill you with a completely new perception of what life could be, fresh insights into what is worth striving for, worth believing in and defending, what it means to live life to the fullest.”
She later realizes,
“Sometimes it seemed strange that I was so absorbed in my work, that I felt so keenly alive under the circumstances that on paper looked like nothing special…. I went home in the evenings thinking I could hear the music of the spheres, an echo from space that touched something deep within me, a kind of harmony with the universe, there was nothing more to long for.”
Though Sofie and Gunnar’s relationship is primarily intellectual, each privately fantasizes about pursuing a romantic relationship with the other. Beyond their eyebrow-raising weekly Thursday afternoon outings away from the office in a quiet bar where they share a bottle of wine and discuss literature, neither of them divulges much personal information to the other. Sofie has one erotic dream about Gunnar in which they exchange nothing more than a touch of the hand. In his telling, Gunnar ruminates on the emptiness of his relationship with his wife and wonders what might have happened if he had pursued a relationship with Sofie.
Early in his career, Gunnar interacted with another young female colleague. Unlike Sofie, Suzanne was overtly and vocally disappointed that their interactions yielded neither a romance nor additional work benefits, and she complained to management. Gunnar was reprimanded by his superiors and demoted. That experience clearly influenced his restrained interactions with Sofie. Yet, it is the restraint and the limited nature of the relationship, despite the rumors and professional questions of power imbalance it raises, that make this novel unique and fresh. Rarely do we see so deeply into a friendship that places a shared intellectual passion at its center without bleeding into a romance. The circumscribed and restrained friendship depicted is perhaps more common than literature generally portrays and it is refreshing to explore the phenomenon such depth.
Please support BookLife: Reviews for Readers and independent booksellers by purchasing Andromeda using the Bookshop.org link to the BookLife online shop below:
